


Coming Home

by Starfleet_Command_Unit_Bi



Series: Coming Home [2]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: F/M, Kid Fic, slight AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-06-01 08:20:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15139013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starfleet_Command_Unit_Bi/pseuds/Starfleet_Command_Unit_Bi
Summary: Gabriel Lorca finally gets home to his family.





	1. Chapter 1

Katrina wasn’t sure how life would adjust now that Gabriel would be back home. The Klingon War had been over for almost a year when they had found him, as well as some of his crew members. Almost fifty of the initial two-hundred had survived the initial attack and made it to the Mirror Universe and but the time Discovery found them, they had been diminished to forty. But it was still forty people back from the dead, forty families reunited.

Ella had been ecstatic upon hearing the news and school had given her the week off to travel with Katrina to meet him at the Medical Star Base he was being held at. I was one of the largest ones that Starfleet had; to hold the sudden increase of patients as well as the many relatives who would be coming to celebrate. She wasn’t sure what to expect when she saw her husband again. Her resolve had been to focus on Ella and to cope with her demons when given the chance but Sarek had requested an urgent meeting on the whereabouts of Emperor Georgiou, meaning that her daughter had to go on by herself.

“You’ll come as soon as you can, won’t you?” Ella had asked as they walked down the hallway. “We won’t be completely together until you’re there. Dad always says that.”

“Of course I will, baby girl,” she had reassured, using the nickname Gabriel had given her. In the two years he’d been gone, both hearing it and saying it had been a great help. Now that he was back, Katrina wasn’t sure if she could break the habit. “You give him lots of hugs for me, won’t you?”

Ella had grinned and ran off to the room he was being kept in. An urge went through her to do the same, to ignore her duty and spend some well-deserved time with her family. But she was an Admiral for a reason and her duty was to keep her family, and everyone else, safe. The Emperor would most likely not be happy if she ever saw Gabriel, even the one from this universe.

The meeting was long, slow and boring. Katrina was glad to see the crew of the Discovery doing well, especially after such a harrowing time. Tilly, no longer a cadet, evidently excelled in her new position and she could see a bright future for the girl if she continued the way she did. Most probably what she was working towards, if her friendship with Burnam was anything to go by.

“You are dismissed,” Sarek finally announced after a particularly mind-numbingly in-depth warning about the dangers of going in to deal with the Emperor based on emotions instead of calling in backup and using logic. Katrina was firmly of the belief that all of that would go out of the window the second any of them saw the woman. If she wasn’t in such a rush, and if she didn’t outrank the others in the way that she did, Katrina would have laughed at the way they almost ran out of the room in relief. She wasn’t much better herself but at least she had a good reason to fall back on if questioned. Not that escaping Sarek wasn’t understandable.

Her pace slowed as she approached the room, number 101, and her nerves increased even more. The therapy after the events with Mirror Lorca had helped so much but she was terrified it had still ruined her relationship with her husband, had destroyed the trust they had always had between them. 

“Kat!” a painfully familiar voice exclaimed when the door opened and she was swept up into Gabriel’s arms. Her Gabriel’s arms. “I’ve missed you, sweetheart.”

“I’ve missed you too,” she managed to say before instincts took over and she kissed him. It had had been their normal greeting from the Academy, started as a way of annoying Pippa who had always called them over dramatic, but when they started being assigned to different ships, it helped them when they were actually able to be together.

“I’m still here, you two,” Ella pointed out and they broke apart laughing. Kat couldn’t help but check him over, even though the doctors would have noticed if there was anything even slightly wrong with him physically. There was a thin scar on his temple, another along the side of his neck and she couldn’t imagine what else was hidden under his clothes. Other than that, he looked genuinely okay and he still had the light in his eyes that the other Lorca had been sorely missing. “You know what, you two talk. I’ll call Rya and tell him that you’re okay.”

Ella hugged them both tightly before she left, a muttered “I love you” going through the group, and Kat could see the flicker of worry going across Gabe’s face when the door shut behind her. Not as okay as he had initially come across. That was to be expected after everything that he had gone through.

“I’ve missed you so much,” he whispered again, holding her tighter still. “I don’t think I can do this anymore, sweetheart. I’ll stay home, teach or something else, anything else, but I can’t anymore. I can’ leave again.”

“Okay darling,” she reassured, running her fingers through his hair. It was longer than she had ever seen it and evidently only recently been cleaned. Absent-mindedly, she undid the tangles in it. “We’ll go home, you’ll talk to someone and you don’t have to go anywhere if you don’t want to. Do you understand that, Gabe? Please tell me you do.”

“Of course I do,” he replied. “I just want to go home and stay there. Look after Ella before she finishes school. Help her find out what she wants to do, she said she’s still confused about all of that. I want to be at home.”

“You’ll be at home,” Kat promised, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “Brass’ll be damned if they even try to send you away again.”

“Mutinous to talk like that, Admiral,” he joked.

“I love you too much to care.”

“I love you too. God, I love you so much. The other universe had a version of you but she was nothing like you. You’re kind and sweet and so caring and she was none of those things and it was like being slapped in the face, sweetheart. She was just so definitely not you.”

“I could say the same about your other version,” Kat muttered, nestling her face in the crook of his neck. “Nothing like you in the slightest. I still can’t understand how I thought he was you.”

“Not exactly the most reasonable of explanations,” Gabe replied, before growing tense. “He didn’t hurt you, did he? What about Ella? She didn’t mention him.”

“He didn’t talk much to her at all. I told her it was just PTSD after the Buran and she accepted it. Still hurt her to find out the truth, especially after thinking you had died in the initial explosion for a few days.”

“What about you?”

Kat shook her head quietly, not able to talk about what happened. Gabriel seemed to understand and pressed a few short kisses to her temple in reassurance. She melted into his touch even more. His hands ran up her back, his wedding ring pressed against her. Usually he wore it on a chain whilst working, a method many of the higher ups used to hide their marriage. An unofficial code of conduct. Her own band was in a special box on her nightstand, kept their safe whilst she travelled.The other version of him had claimed it was destroyed in the explosion.

“I love you, Kat.”

 

“I love you too, Gabe.”

 

 

They got home by the end of the week, almost all of the remaining crew members discharged by then. Gabriel made a point of saying goodbye, personally, to all of them although he needed Kat with him as a form of emotional support. She was more than happy to offer it. Ella went to visit the crewmembers she remembered from their shore visits as well as talking to Michael who Pippa had introduced to her when she was little. Kat suspected that there was a slight case of hero worship; the pseudo daughter of her godmother becoming a war hero. 

“Rya said he’ll be coming over tomorrow to do some school work,” Ella said as they sat around the table to have dinner, the first time the family had been complete in two years. “And then you two can catch up properly.”

“How has he been?”

“Good. His parents want him to join with a symbiont but he doesn’t want to. Says he’s perfectly sculpted his personality to be as annoying as possible and becoming joined with a bunch of other people would ruin all his hard work. They didn’t really like that answer. Oh, and he got into the Academy so if you become a teacher you might have him in one of your classes.”

“Any ideas on what you want to do, yet?” Kat asked, worried about the answer. The subject had been sensitive for quite some time, although it was a bit easier now that Ella had both of her parents to talk to about it. She was smart, so smart, but had shown no real interest in following in her parents’ paths, or any other path. 

“I’ve had an idea, but I need to look into some things first.”

“That’s great, Ella,” she exclaimed, pleasantly surprised by the revelation. “Do you want to tell us now or wait until we go insane from wondering?”

“You can go insane. Once I know a bit more about it, then I’ll tell you. I’ll be able to tell you if I’m going to do it then, as well.”

“Is it something you will definitely enjoy?” Gabriel asked.

“Oh yeah. Definitely.”

“Seriously Ella, we’re going to go insane,” Katrina sighed affectionately, ruffling her daughter’s hair as she walked past to put the plates away. Ella ran upstairs whilst her parents tidied up, presumably to talk to Rya again. They had been friends since they were little children, each other’s only real friend, and half the time it seemed like they were connected at the hip.

“At least we don’t have to worry about that,” Gabriel said, breaking the comfortable silence. “Even if whatever she’s looking into doesn’t work out, she’s looked at something and she has a better idea of what she’ll want.”

Kat smiled at him and kissed his cheek. She had been unable to stop herself since he’d gotten back, constantly reaching out to squeeze his hand or shoulder, just to reassure herself that he was really, actually, there. Command had given her the next two weeks off before she’d need to start working at the Academy. Gabriel had a few weeks of counselling before they considered letting him work at the Academy as well but, so long as he passed at some point, they would love to have him. Probably another reason why Ella didn’t want to join.

“What do you think this possibility is?” she asked.

“I genuinely have no idea. She’s smart, she could do most things, I just don’t know what she wants to do,” he sighed. “Pippa used to talk to her about this, remember? Maybe that’s why it’s hard for her to think about it? Old memories?”

“That might be it. Did Pip ever tell you what they talked about because the only thing about Ella’s future that I remember them talking about was when she gave the constellations actual names and decided that maybe the Science Division was not for her.”

“Oh yeah, I think Asfenah still has that hanging up in their house. We really should visit her when she back on planet,” Gabriel grinned. “Definitely showing that one to Ella. Do you think she even remembers it? She was so young.”

Kat laughed and shrugged, putting the last of the dishes away. They settled onto the sofa, nestled against it each other, and watched old reruns of a show that Ella had been watching earlier. It wasn’t the best show in the world and both found that their eyes were growing heavier and heavier by the second even though the clock showed it was barely even nine in the evening and their daughter was still wide awake upstairs.

“We’re old,” Gabe muttered, rubbing his eyes. “How did we use to do all those things? The parties and the drinking?”

“Good short term decisions and bad long term thinking,” she replied, feeling herself drifting off and yawning. “Come on, if we sleep here we’ll be aching tomorrow. My god, we really are old if we’re doing that.”

Gabriel laughed as they slowly made their way up the stairs.


	2. Chapter 2

Gabriel woke up naturally for the first time since he had gotten back to his own universe. At least once a night he would wake up from nightmares, sweat soaking through his night clothes, adrenaline coursing through his veins and the images of everything he had seen flashing in front of his eyes, whilst Kat whispered soothing words into his ear until he could hear her. He would cry into her shoulder as he climbed down from the horrors of his dreams and her hands would run through his hair.

Kat had her own nightmares, ones where she would wake up kicking desperately with silent screams as she relived her torture. Gabriel would wake up the very moment that she tensed in her sleep, hyper aware of his wife lying next to him, even as he slept. Once they were awake, it was difficult for either of them to get to sleep so they would start their daily routines early. Sometimes, even before the sun was up.

He studied Kat’s face as she slept, taking in every inch of her and memorising all of her features. Whilst Gabriel planned on sticking to what he had said to her the previous day, never leaving Earth and maybe becoming a teacher, there was still that nagging fear of never seeing her again. It was like when Ella had just been born, he would watch her late at night when she slept just to memorise what his daughter looked like in case he never came home.

Their house was filled with photos and holo images of their small family, no one voicing the worry of knowing that someone might go out on a mission and never come back home again. After the war and everything else that had happened to them, Gabriel felt an itching feeling in the back of his skull to start taking a lot more. The camera was downstairs in the kitchen, resting alongside other trinkets, not necessary anymore but with a certain feel of nostalgia. 

Pressing a kiss to Katrina’s temple, nuzzling her cheek affectionately when she moved to be closer to him, he carefully climbed out to go get it. Gentle sunlight was coming through the windows and the clock showed it to be six in the morning. Still not early enough for Ella to wake up for school or for Kat to get up for work but enough that it wouldn’t be unreasonable for him to be awake. Even if this was a one off, then he would definitely appreciate.

He stopped on his way down the stairs to go and get the camera to study the pictures that they had along the wall of the stairs. His favourite was right at the bottom, framed in a simple silver outline. Ella was barely four, tiny with his bright blue eyes and Kat’s smile shining at the camera. Katrina was resting her on her hip, one arm around the girl in a tight hug and the other around Gabriel’s waist. His own arms were wrapped around the two and they were both grinning at each other. 

Philippa had taken the picture and continuously called them to look properly at the camera and, once the picture had been taken, had called them the sappiest saps she had ever met. Ella had giggled, snuggling closer to her mummy, and soon the attention went straight back to her, the three adults fussing over her. It was a picnic, he remembered, just a few days after Asfenah went on a year-long trip. The longest any of them had been away from each other. A way to take their mind off of the prolonged absence.

Gabriel made his way to the kitchen as quietly as he could. Ella had always been a terrifying light sleeper, to the extent where he wondered how she got any sleep, and Katrina had been on edge since the war and woke up to the tiniest of noises. He didn’t want that to happen without him there to stop the flow of worried thoughts. It was what made him move a bit more hurriedly up the stairs to get back to their room.

To his relief, Kat was still asleep. Curled up in a ball, somehow managing to grab his pillow and hold it against her, she looked beautiful. Gabriel wasn’t sure how she managed it, thinking maybe how relaxed she looked in contrast to what the world expected of her during waking hours, or the slight pout for when she reached out to his empty side of the bed. The picture was taken almost on instinct. Unfortunately, he had forgotten that traditional cameras still made noise when capturing a picture and the noise of the shutter woke up Kat.

“Gabe?” she asked in a quiet voice, almost sounding scared.

“Just me, sweetheart,” he smiled, climbing back into the bed. “I see you’ve taken my pillow hostage in your sleep. You okay?”

“Just the usual,” Kat replied, cuddling up against him after giving back the pillow. “What about you? I didn’t hear you have a nightmare or anything. What made you get up?”

“Wanted to go and get this,” he grinned, showing her the picture on the small screen. It was a good one. Her face was caught mid-scrunch as she woke up, producing the cutest facial expression he had ever seen. “It’s a keeper, don’t you think?”

Katrina laughed softly and took the camera from him to see it closer, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. “My turn, smile.”

It quickly dissolved into a series of very unfortunate pictures being taken that Gabriel knew they would never even think of deleting. Katrina was still laughing at him, having taken a particularly unflattering image, and it felt so good to hear his wife laugh. After so long in the Mirror Universe, not sure if he would ever be able to hear it again and worried about one day forgetting it. Now, cocooned in their blankets, safe in their room, in their house, all of those thoughts, just this once, felt like they were left in the Mirror Universe.

He could remember coming through, the cheers that went through the crew when they recognised the Discovery as being from their own universe. The testing, although unpleasant, was something Gabriel understood as necessary and he went through it. Once the initial results came through, clarifying that they were home, the crew were given the initial information. His heart had stopped when he’d heard there’d been a war, images of Kat dying in a ship explosion or at the hands of a soldier or someone somehow getting hold of Ella. Thankfully, someone had the common sense to collect all current information about the crew’s family and everything was explained.

His heart stopped again when he read about what happened to Katrina. Captured and tortured by Klingons, broken spinal cord, tricked by an imposter. The record said nothing about the other version of him interacting with Ella and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand, he was thrilled that no one bad had gotten even close to his daughter, but on the other, he knew how much it would hurt her to suddenly be ignored by a man she believed to be her father. 

“Hey, what is it?” Kat asked, breaking him out of his thoughts. Her laughing had been replaced by a look of worry. “You’ve gone all tense.”

“Just bad thoughts. It’s okay.”

He leaned over and kissed her softly to convey that he really was, even though they both knew that they wouldn’t, couldn’t, lie to each other. Before anything else could happen, whilst his hands settled at her waist and hers buried themselves in his hair, the alarm rang out loudly. It went off in tandem with Ella’s who slowly stomped out of her room to the kitchen for breakfast. Some things, no matter what happened, never changed. 

“Parenthood,” Kat breathed as they broke apart, still nose to nose and gazing into the other’s eyes . “It never stops, does it?”

Ella was eating her cereal slowly, eyes glazed over with the look of someone who had been woken up after not nearly enough sleep. Not uncommon from a teenager, even one with only a few years left of being a teenager, but still Gabriel found himself worrying. That was just being a parent, worrying about things he shouldn’t and, probably, not worrying about the things that he maybe should. Ella was a good kid, but even good kids did things they weren’t supposed to do and she had a lot of time alone.

“Morning, baby girl,” he said, kissing the crown of her head as he went passed. “Sleep well?”

“Rya and I lost track of time when we were talking and didn’t stop until midnight and now I think my brain will collapse from sleep deprivation,” she mumbled in between mouthfuls of cereal. “We’re gonna go to the skatepark after school so long as I haven’t collapsed by then and we’ll come back about six to get some work done.”

“Sounds good,” he replied. “I hope you don’t collapse at school.”

“Really going to challenge yourself today,” Katrina deadpanned. “Oh, Gabe, don’t forget, you have that meeting an hour before lunch time with the Admirals.”

“What about?” Ella asked, slightly more awake now.

“Just what I’m going to do once psych have finished with me,” Gabriel explained gently. “Nothing to worry about, I promise.”

“They’re not going to send you back out there, are they? They can’t do that.”

“They can’t and they won’t,” Katrina reassured, squeezing her shoulder.

“The talk will be about me becoming a teacher at the Academy. So I can still help without being sent away again. Never leaving again unless I have to,” he promised. “You’ll be stuck with me forever, baby girl. No more parties if mum ever goes away.”

“The only person I would invite to a party is Rya and he’s over here most nights anyway,” Ella pointed out. “I gotta go and get ready for school.”

“Need to be dropped off?”

“No thanks, Rya’s brother is back and so he’s taking us both.”

“Isn’t he only a year older than you two?” Katrina asked. “When did he become an adult to shepherd you two around the place?”

“When his parents promised to cover some of his school expenses and he is suddenly in a very charitable mood,” Ella grinned. “Besides, he’s very nice.”

Katrina and Gabriel shared a look as Ella ran upstairs. The closest she had come to complimenting other people who weren’t family like Rya might as well be was telling someone from day camp that they weren’t completely terrible and almost made up for Rya not being there. The two brothers must be a lot more similar than they thought to warrant that type of praise. 

“What have you got on the schedule today?” Gabriel asked, digging into his pancakes. It was a deal he had come up with the nutritionist Starfleet had forced him to see, missing the taste of any type of food that tasted good but still needing to eat healthily to build up his strength, that he could have pancakes once a week. 

“Nothing too busy; just paperwork and things. Want to catch lunch together if you’ve got the time?” she offered, eating her own stack of pancakes. It was only a good idea if they were able to share it, after all. 

“Sounds great,” he smiled. Gabriel nudged her foot with his own, making her smirk at him. A few more prods and they were having a full on footsie war until Kat realised she had to finish getting ready for work. She was still in the shower, they had water showers on Earth better than any sonic shower on a ship, when Ella was picked up by Rya and his brother, Medir. The two didn’t look at all similar, and Gabriel knew Rya well after the boy spent almost his entire childhood over at their house or Ella at his. Medir was training off planet for something or other, Rya didn’t really know, and had evidently come back for a brief holiday.

“Have a good day, baby girl,” he told Ella before she ran out the door, getting a tight hug from her in return. “I love you.”

“Love you too, dad.”


	3. Chapter 3

“How was your meeting earlier?” 

Gabriel took a bite of his sandwich. He hadn’t been on campus, properly, since he was a student and he was finding it strange. There was something oddly nostalgic about it all, watching the cadets go by, talking excitedly about what had happened in class or about a party that was being held. He remembered the party where he and Kat had met, or the little of it he had attended. 

“It went well; once I’ve gotten through all of the psych evals I’ll begin taking on classes. Might end up having to teach Rya in the future which is something that I never thought I’d say,” he joked. “I met with some of the other teachers so that they could explain some of the things that I’ll be doing and I think I’ll really enjoy it. Like, really enjoy.”

“I’m glad,” she smiled, squeezing his hand across the table. “You’ll be a good teacher. You loved it on the Explorer whenever a new ensign came onto the bridge that you would have to teach all of the procedures to. Even if you did, sometimes, teach them the wrong thing as a prank.”

“You found the party incident funny as well,” he countered, smirking. “But this is something that I can actually do, Kat, and stay with you and Ella and not have to go out there again. I don’t think I’ve been this excited in so long.”

“Ella’s birthday is coming up,” she reminded him. “You do tend to get over excited with those. Even if it’s just her and Rya with some pizza and drinks.”

“It’s our little girl and I just love her so much.”

Kat snorted into her own sandwich as she remembered all of the other birthday incidents. Gabriel tended to go over the top for it, making sure that he did everything he possibly could. When she turned six and he was away on a month long mission, he dressed up specially as a bunny for their entire call just to make her laugh, even though all of his crew would be able to see him. When she was away for her eighth, he created a home movie of all the clips of her he could find so Ella didn’t feel lonely. 

“I know, but I don’t think she wants a bunny costume when she turns eighteen,” she tried to say diplomatically but it came out as a laugh anyway. “Although Rya and his brother might find it funny.”

“Rya’s brother is coming?” he asked, surprised.

“Now he’s back here, they’ve been spending a lot of time as a group so she thought she’d invite him. When they were little they used to all have birthday parties together.”

“Yeah, but he’s a lot older than them.”

“A year older and only because Ella’s born in August. Not becoming an overprotective dad, are you?” Kat teased before relenting. “She does like him a bit but it’s weird because he’s her best friend’s brother and they were sort of friends when they were younger. Now please don’t be weird about it.”

“Would you like the list of what I could freak out about in terms of this? Because I can give it to you, if you want.”

They spent the rest of lunch in very relaxed conversation, remembering all of the things that they used to do as cadets. It came with a bittersweet feeling, remembering that many of the friends they had made were now dead due to the war or something else going on. But it was still nice, especially when they saw cadets making the same mistakes that they did with the same confidence that they had. 

“Remember when Asfenah used to have her cereal with coffee and called it a more efficient way of gaining energy?” Gabe laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Pippa look so disgusted. It was like she was going to be sick.”

“I thought I was going to be sick! Besides, Pippa used to take her coffee with salt after a prank that you pulled,” she protested with a grin. 

“It wasn’t my prank that did that, it was Pippa’s stubbornness to acknowledge I had put salt in her coffee every morning that made her start taking it as her normal,” he replied. “And I thought you found it funny.”

“I did until I accidentally took a sip of it when we were serving on the Scorpion and I nearly choked. Captain Erskine wanted to send me to the medical bay he was so repulsed by it. I’m fairly certain Pip ended up being reprimanded as well.”

“Would have loved to read that defence report.”

“Oh yeah.”

Sitting in silence for a few minutes, pausing their lunch every few moments to glance at each other like teenagers, Katrina could find herself remembering a time when they had actually done this frequently, when was wasn’t hanging over their heads and all of the traumas it had brought could be forgotten about for a short while. That was until a few very familiar crew members walked into the cafe as well. 

Michael Burnham. Sylvia Tilly. Paul Stamets. Saru. 

The crew of the USS Discovery. The crew who were all betrayed by the Mirror Universe version of Gabriel. Whilst the four would already have some ideas about him, having served with his doppelganger, the only one that Gabriel actually knew was having seen Michael a few times whenever Pippa had dragged her to visit them whilst serving on the Shenzhou. Katrina prayed for whatever deity was out there that nothing would go wrong but it was Murphy’s Law that something would.

Tilly saw them first, waving wildly at Katrina with the enthusiasm of a small child that she thankfully hadn’t lost after everything that she had been through. The actions diverted the remaining three’s attention to them. Gabriel had noticed her attention had drifted from her food and looked around to see what had caught it. After getting back, he had done everything he could to found out what had happened on Discovery so he knew what to expect, meaning that the faces would be easily recognisable. That was about all of the benefits.

“Admiral Cornwell, Captain Lorca,” Tilly greeted, walking over to them. “It’s great to see you both. Oh, I’m Sylvia Tilly, Captain. I served on the USS Discovery when … all of that stuff happened.”

“I’m well aware, Ensign. Congratulations on your promotion; based on your file it is very well-deserved,” he replied, a gentle smile on his face whilst his hand sought out Katrina’s. She squeezed it tightly. “Glad to see that you are doing well.”

The rest of them walked over somewhat awkwardly and offered their own uncomfortable greetings. A brief pause took over the group in which Kat wished the ground would swallow them up and save them. Not too hard because of the risk of the universe deciding that was what they were going to deal with now. 

“Your daughter is close to graduating,” Michael said, surprising everyone else. “Is she doing well?”

“Ella’s great,” Gabe replied with a grin. “Graduating the top of her class and apparently has something that she’s planning on doing afterwards but won’t tell us just yet. Just waiting for results in a few months and then it is all sorted. Still talks about you.”

“Captain Philippa would often show me the map of the stars they made together when she was young. Ella certainly has a … unique mind,” Michael replied diplomatically and Kat had to bite her lip to stop herself from laughing. Apparently a lot more people knew about it than she had previously expected. 

“Unique?” Saur asked curiously, seeming afraid of the answer.

“The most memorable one was when she named the Big Dipper constellation ‘Dave’,” Gabriel said. “Took naming them in a very literal way.”

“Well that’s amazing,” Stamets said, still looking uncomfortable. “I guess we should be off. We’ve intruded too long. Goodbye, Admiral, Captain.”

Gabe smiled at her gently once they were left to themselves, bringing her hand up to kiss. “I love you. You know that, right?”

“Always, Gabe,” she replied. “Now eat up. I’ve been told I have a call with some new admiral later and you have your session to get to.”

“I know, I know,” he grinned. “I was thinking of making dinner when I get home. Maybe my special pizza, if you want?”

“That sounds amazing.”

He wasn’t sure when to expect Ella home, having never understood how long she could spend at a skatepark without getting bored, so when he got home and saw her sprawled on the floor with Rya and his brother. Her board had been taken apart, alongside the other two, and plans had been sketched and strewn about everywhere. He had to admit he was impressed with the dedication they had to doing ridiculous stunts that made him lose a few years on his life every time he watched it. 

“I see you’ve been busy,” he said dryly. They looked up at him curiously. “Please tell me you’re making those death traps safer instead of more dangerous.”

“We’re making them more fun,” Rya said cheerfully.

“So more dangerous, then, that’s great,” Gabriel replied. “I’m making my speciality pizza, if you guys are staying for that.”

“Mum and dad want us back in about half an hour, so we’ll have to skip, Cap,” Rya replied. “Thanks for the offer. Yero, have you ever had his pizza? It’s amazing.”

Yero shook his head regretfully. They were similar, he noticed, appearance-wise, and the one year age gap could hardly be noticed anymore. At least, not the way it was when they were younger. Katrina’s words about how Ella sort of liked him still rang in his ears and he did everything that he could to push that thought from his mind. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that Yero seemed to like Ella just a little bit back from the way that he was looking at her. 

“You’ll have to come by another day and I’ll make it,” he managed to say as kindly as he could. “I should probably leave you all to your work. Evidently it is of the highest importance.”

“Love you,” Ella called out as he left the room.

“Love you too.”

Rya and Yero were leaving just as Kat was coming back, bumping into each other in the doorway. She pressed a kiss to his temple when she walked into the kitchen, being careful not to tread on any of Ella’s work that was still all over the floor, and sat down heavily at the table. Her own PADDs were on the table, slightly neater but not very much, and Gabriel recognised a few of them as referencing the Klingon War. Something that was bound to bring up any number of bad memories. 

“Alright day at work, mum?” Ella called out, still fixated on her plans for the board.

“Not bad,” Kat replied. “What about you? What were Rya and Yero over here for?”

“We’re working on a new heart attack for dad.”

Even though it was clear that Kat knew exactly what Ella was talking about, what they normally called her boards since she had been old enough to ride one, she still seemed very surprised. Gabriel raised a questioning eyebrow and it only seemed to make her more uncomfortable with whatever she had just thought. A smile was briefly tugging at her lips, which meant that it couldn’t have been that bad. 

“What is it?” he asked quietly, being careful to make sure that Ella definitely couldn’t hear them. “Something wrong?”

“She hasn’t made a new board since she found out about the Buran.”

It was like being hit with a ton of bricks. Ella, for as long as he could remember, had always been creating new boards and ways to ride them. As he adjusted to everything else back home, he hadn’t realised some of the things that had been normal previously were gone. But back now, she was back to doing what she had loved before. But knowing he had missed it, that he had caused so much pain in his daughter, still made his heart clench painfully.

“It’s alright,” Kat whispered, holding him tightly. “We’re all okay. For now. She hasn’t started testing the board out yet. That’ll be a few broken bones, at least.”

“Probably another dozen fractures and sprains,” Gabe added, nuzzling into her neck, relaxing in her arms again.


End file.
